You may find this hard to believe, but for once I have a short answer; an answer that will not satisfy the atheist, but can prove ignorance.

Actually, you've already provided the answer, but I'll add to that.

Basic principle of Christians (and Jews up to a point) - One must believe and have faith. Therefore, without possessing the basic element of faith, or understanding and recognition of the requirement, getting past 2 or 4 is not going to happen.

Need I move on to the requirement of Chrisitians to accept "we cannot understand that which is beyond our comprehension?" Let Sam Harris et. al. tackle that postulation.

David! Nice to hear from you, again!

Hope the new year is treating you well.

And actually, I thought of you quite a bit when I wrote the second half: I thought you'd say something thoughful in response. I wasn't disappointed.

A general note to the audience, since I know pretty much everyone will have the same temptation: I'm not, here, trying to prove theism or capital punishment, or disprove the opposite. Nor am I saying that there aren't some much better arguments either way than those mentioned above.

Although I (obviously) have my views on those areas, the thing I'm trying to focus on here is the form of one or two specific dialogs: what is being heard and answered, what is being ignored.

It could be about carrots, for that purpose -- except that people don't care enough about carrots that this mechanism will kick in. :-)

That said, I cannot resist commenting on your comment:

Basic principle of Christians (and Jews up to a point) - One must believe and have faith.

I know there are many people who see it this way, and I completely respect them, but I myself am not one of them.

The phenomenon you describe (reactions to cognitive dissonance, and the use of heuristics to simulate rationality) was touched on a little in a college course I took. But I don't remember that a "mechanism" was discussed. What would your mechanism look like? Are you asking which portion of the brain acts as a filter? Or are you looking for something more abstract?

Ryan,

Explain this phrase more, as my own education connected "heuristics" mostly to algorithms, not people:

...use of heuristics to simulate rationality...

Where, in the examples above, is rationality being "simulated"? I'm not being critical. I just want to hear more about how you'd describe that. I don't see how a failure to respond to or even acknowledge an argument is a simulation of rationality.

And what "heuristic" is involved in failing to notice, say, the big bang? I've always understood a heuristic to be a method of searching for information or an answer. I'm not sure how that matches up with what I'm saying here, since no searching seems to occur. (Quite the opposite.)

I can see how you might think, above, that I'm only describing a reaction to cognitive dissonance -- because I'm describing an action. But I'm using the action to point to an underlying cause. As I said above "psychology recognizes 'cognitive dissonance'... but has not, as best I know, actually named or focused on the underlying mechanism which causes that dissonance."

I suspect there is something which happens before the dissonance -- something that causes it, and yet which also apparently can fuel certain strong responses to it.

For example, I used to be in favor of gun control. I heard a certain set of arguments, and I changed my mind. Then, I repeated these same set of arguments to a dear friend of mine. Who burst into tears and started repeating: "Guns kill people."

This is, in fact, a true story.

So what's the difference there? It's not simply cognitive dissonance: I had already talked a few friends out of carrying weapons, so I clearly had something invested. And I've certainly felt cognitive dissonance -- I've spotted it happening when I listen to Air America, for example.

But I don't burst into tears, or seemingly mis-hear the argument over and over and over again, nor generally ignore important evidence (as far as I'm aware, that is). Generally, I turn the radio off so I can process what I've heard so far, and carefully review the information to see if it makes sense. And sometimes, I do more research to see if they have a valid point.

So there's something more going on here.

Perhaps, regarding gun control, she felt greater cognitive dissonance then I did. If so, the question is what contributed to that? Why would she say, for example: "Guns kill people", but never accept the argument "Cars kill people"? Why is "guns" a trigger word, but not "cars"? Both, in fact kill people.

And then, secondly, why the bizarre reactions? For example, I have a very simple against argument abortion, where I simply point out that if we don't know where life begins, then it is immoral to destroy the possible vessel.

When I repeated this argument to a pro-choice friend, she looked at me at said: "But how do you know for sure when life begins?" I thought she was confused, so I repeated it again, pointing out carefully that the whole point was that we didn't know when life began. She looked at me again and said: "But how are you sure when life begins?" After several tries, she left the room.

This is not even atypical, in my experience.

This isn't mere "dissonance" Ryan. "Dissonance", on it's own, can't re-write an entire argument to mean something entirely different. "Dissonance" on it's own can't explain how someone will savage a friend for no longer having the same beliefs.

There is something in there making choices, and it seems to be happening at sub- or pre-concious level. Dissonance is just a feeling. The word tells us nothing about why it occurs, or why it accompanies bizarre (but clearly sophisticated) behavior regarding some topics, in some people, where it does not in others.

I've said I'm looking for, or perhaps pointing out, a mechanism, not a feeling. A motorboat and dock, not just a wake. I'm intrigued by why wake is produced sometimes, and not others, and why it accompanies seemingly strange behavior in some cases, but not in others.

And I've proposed a mechanism: all this generally exists/happens to protect the individual's view of his or herself. That's what it "looks like", to answer your question.

The specific neural wiring is not as interesting to me -- and I have no means of investigating that anyway. By analogy, Neuton didn't have to understand how gravity was transmitted (and we still don't, anyway) to characterize its effects and domain of influence.

Perhaps that could be done, someday. But it's only of tangential interest. What's more important to me is trying to figure out how to deal with the liberals I love so dearly, since having rational discussions seems to be out of the question. They seem so angry and fearful about "facts" they apparently can't even allow themselves to discuss with an unbeliever, for fear of contradiction.

And I have several friends going through this also.

Okay, I understand what you're talking about now.
Not sure I have a good answer (this post doesn't directly address your O.P.) but I'll try and find one. I think the course I took discussed the phenomenon but I don't think they gave a precise name to it, outside of saying it was a reaction to cognitive dissonance. I wonder, re: your previous comment, if literature on cults really would have any of the mechanisms you're looking for.

To explain what I meant about heuristics; heuristics are probably not enough to explain what's going on here, but it's one mechanism I've found underlying irrational behavior so it was my first thought.

A heuristic is a 'rule of thumb' that people use to avoid constantly rethinking their actions. A fair number of problems regarding miscommunication can be traced back to either emotional or logical heuristics. For example, in our society there's a heuristic of reciprocity. If I give you something, you give me something in return. The Hare Krishna cult used this heuristic to get religious donations, despite the fact that most people who donated didn't really want to give the H.K.s money. The H.K.s would give a flower to people, refuse to take it back, and insist it was a gift. Finally they would ask for a small religious donation which they would occasioanlly get. They got the donation because of the heuristic of reciprocity and not because people rationally decided to donate to the H.K.s.

The H.K.s would gather the flowers from the trashcans just a little ways away and reuse them.

Eventually, most people recognized what was going on (but by what mechanism?) and altered their heuristics. The point of this is that my model for "rationality" is typically a patchwork of these heuristics or "rules of thumb" and a problem with someone acting irrationally is often related to a failure in their heuristics.

"The people who disagree with x are evil or misguided" is one fairly common heuristic, for instance.

My father has a game that he uses to help consultants build rapport. It's based on a simplification of the keirsey temperament test. The premise is that people build rapport (trust) using different heuristics. The types of people (simplified, so that a salesperson can do the calculations on their feet) are; relationship, process, social and results.

Relationship people tend to build trust based on close relationships. Either you know one of their close friends, or you have strong relationships with your own close friends. Building trust with a stranger who is a relationship type may involve talking about your close friends.

Social people trust things that are popular and are very interested in who you know.

Results people think in terms of "we need x, this does x, buy x." Many managers are results people.

Process people care about how things actually work. They're the ones who, when buying computers, discuss cache, RAM, hard disk platter rotation speeds, etc.

Whenver my dad has done this test with a group of close friends, they immediately start making playfully derogatory comments about the other types of people (except for results people, who are often used to using other types of people for their particular skills. Results people especially tend to rely on process people.)

Process is the rarest type (~10% of the population is primarily process, and advertisements are never geared towards process people. Unfortunately, religious arguments are also very rarely geared towards process people. ) We're both process people, at least to some degree. I'm also "relationship."

I know that the millitary and cults often use highly stressful situations to remold people's heuristics (basic training.) I don't know anything else that has such a universal effect.

... so the general problem with using heuristics seem to be similar in both humans and computers. I haven't gotten into the use of heuristics with computers yet, however.

I wonder, re: your previous comment, if literature on cults really would have any of the mechanisms you're looking for.

I wondered about that too. In fact, that crossed my mind recently, when I was reading Eric Scheibeler's Merchants of Deception, where he was describing his own situation, of being unable to process anti-Quixtar material he was reading.

And he mentioned ways of getting people out of their cult-installed beliefs and control mechanisms: there are fear-blocks which keep outsiders from addressing such mechanisms directly. So you can't, with a cultist, directly confront their beliefs: that doesn't work. Instead, you have to first identify the fear-triggers and disable those.

So I'm still pondering that part of it, and might indeed pick up the kind of book you suggest. In fact, I've noted one in particular.

A heuristic is a 'rule of thumb' that people use to avoid constantly rethinking their actions.

Ah: Like generalizing, or assuming all people on the other side have bad motives, or resorting to familliar arguments. "Bush lied" -- true or false -- would be a heuristic if used unthinkingly. As would "if the bible says it, I believe it." And I like your HK example. Thank you, Ryan.

"The people who disagree with x are evil or misguided" is one fairly common heuristic, for instance.

Isn't that sometimes a necessary logical inference, given certain conclusions about X? I mean, yes, there's a third option, that you yourself could be misguided -- but at some point, at some level of research, that becomes increasingly implausible. (And nobody walks around saying: "It is my belief" before every sentence, admitting that we could be wrong on every single point -- which we could be.)

Say some people think all Albanians are actually brain-sucking aliens. How much research do I have to do before I'm allowed to rule out the idea that I'm the one who's misguided (for thinking otherwise), and then offer the statement above?

Or does the fact that I simply considered it mean it's no longer a mere heuristic? I would guess that's the case, from your definition of a heuristic as a mental shortcut.

Eventually, most people recognized what was going on (but by what mechanism?)

Why is this a mystery? I mean, perhaps they read a paragraph like the one you just wrote, explaining what was going on. Then they learned that that reaction wasn't beneficial and modified.

While the exact physical mechanism is probably unknown (is that what you're referring to?), we call that behavior "learning", no? What are you seeing, which I am not, which makes this a mystery? I mean this seriously.

I think I see a bit more helpful information below, but am leaving this so you can see my reaction...

The point of this is that my model for "rationality" is typically a patchwork of these heuristics or "rules of thumb" and a problem with someone acting irrationally is often related to a failure in their heuristics.

Oh. Well, then I can see one area we greatly differ.

In contrast, I think the brain has a built-in mechanism which already "knows" how to do logic. (And many other things, also.) If so, these "heuristics" arise when we come to a conclusion and don't wish to repeat the math, when we adopt behavior we see someone else doing, or when we're conditioned by repeated environmental stimuli.

Or do you acknowledge this mechanism as well?

It's based on a simplification of the keirsey temperament test...

My tentative conclusion is that Myers-Briggs, and it's derivatives, aren't meaningful or valid. (I know, that upsets a lot of people.) But I think the final conclusion you mention, of infering most people tend to get data in one of 3 (or whatever) different ways is probably sensible and right. (Or close enough.)

Unfortunately, religious arguments are also very rarely geared towards process people.

Have you read any of C.S. Lewis's apologetics books? I wonder how you'd categorize that body. If you'd say it addressed "process" people, then it might overturn the above statement, since his books are some of the most popular "religious arguments" for Christianity.

I know that the millitary and cults often use highly stressful situations to remold people's heuristics (basic training.) I don't know anything else that has such a universal effect.

That's one of the things which I find so intriguing about Christanity, Ryan. Being an active Christian, and knowing many people who are (and some who are in transition), I frequently see extensive changes -- of that magnitude -- but apparently without any coercive control structure.

I don't go to a high-pressure, cult-like church. They barely know your name, in fact. But it's a cool place, and people who visit like coming back, so it's a pretty light touch. If you want, there are various ways to get involved, most of which are also pretty non-coercive. (Fixing people's homes, baking a cassole for someone who's sick, or studying a book of the bible -- which, in my experience, often ends up being more social talk than study.)

But I know people who, once they get hooked up, change significantly in their demeanor, values and outlook. For example, I know a guy who was so mean, that bartenders hated to see him come in: he was always starting fights. Now the same exactly people know him as a sweet, nice guy who'd give you the shirt off his back, and whose most annoying characteristic is that he's constantly handing out tracts.

To cite a milder case: one woman I know seemed like a nice person (to me, anyway), but a bit jaded, perhaps, at times. She liked angry-girl music, if that's any indication.

Something I said once triggered a memory in her, and she decided to get back into the whole God-thing she'd done as a teen. Since then, there have been remarkable changes in her life, approach to people, values, and outlook -- 180 degrees on many points. In under a year.

All that with absolutely, to my knowledge, no coercion from me or anyone else. And her new church is even wimpier than mine, above. I like them, but I can't possibly conclude they were responsible for her rather extensive shift.

The same would be true for C.S. Lewis, who, frankly, disliked going to church. (Hymns were, for him "mediocre poetry set to music" and he clearly didn't enjoy the social aspects. Attendence was a gruding result of his change, not the cause of it.)

I've never encountered anything quite like it. Scientology can do something similar in extent (though often harmful, I'd argue) but it requires frequent, mind-blowing "auditing" sessions.

Afterthought:

... heuristics are probably not enough to explain what's going on here, but it's one mechanism I've found underlying irrational behavior so it was my first thought.

Would that make resorting to heuristics as an explanation... a heuristic? ;-)

And I noticed you posted this meanwhile:

I haven't gotten into the use of heuristics with computers yet, however.

Say we wanted to find the maximum value of an unknown function, from 0 to 1.

One heuristic might be to divide the interval into ten slots, call the function ten times, and see which values return the highest numbers. Then, select the highest two values, and repeat the experiment for a number of iterations, until you're within the desired precision.

That's not an exact solution, and it might fail in some cases, but it probably works often enough. So it's a "heuristic", not an equation.

The term isn't used much, as, more often, you know exactly what you need to do. (Get data from database, display on screen. Get data from screen, put in database. "Data farming", my friend says.) You don't generally "use heuristics" really (AI being mostly dead at the moment), you just refer to some algorithms as such.

Isn't that sometimes a necessary logical inference, given certain conclusions about X?

Of course. I shouldn't have emphasized how often heuristics lead to irrational conclusions. Those bad conclusions tend to be margin cases. Heuristics are used because they're effective (and possibly also correct) in most situations. Nearly all situations involving more information than we can exhaustively process are processed using heuristics. For example, your 'auditing' of Jimmy Carter was pretty explicity a heuristic. Likewise, saying that 'a knight is worth three points, but is worth less than a bishop in the end game' is a useful heuristic for chess. Heuristics inevitably involve ignoring a certain amount of information. They're a 'lossy' form of compression for the information that we get from the world, so to speak. And occasionally I've found myself talking at cross purposes with people because we relied on different heuristics and couldn't understand each other. So when you said that people tended to edit out information, my knee-jerk reaction (thinking about heuristics was a heuristic, as you said. ;-) ) was to wonder what heuristics they might have been using to parse the situation, and if those heuristics could be responsible for the lost information. Your response was probably more dead-on though.

Say some people think all Albanians are actually brain-sucking aliens. How much research do I have to do before I'm allowed to rule out the idea that I'm the one who's misguided (for thinking otherwise) ...Or does the fact that I simply considered it mean it's no longer a mere heuristic?

I'd say that if you got the wrong answer, it'd be useful to go back and reconsider the heuristics that you used to determine if any of them might be faulty. And if so, under what conditions. Generally, I think that the term heuristic is used to describe very general rules people use which sometimes have errors, to emphasize that the rules are aproximations subject to error. But I don't think there's anything fundamentally different about more specific heuristics, aside from their specificity and lower error rate.

Eventually, most people recognized what was going on (but by what mechanism?)

Why is this a mystery? I mean, perhaps they read a paragraph like the one you just wrote, explaining what was going on. Then they learned that that reaction wasn't beneficial and modified.

Well, I was just wondering what triggered the learning process in different people; immediate self relfection? peer pressure? Cognitive dissonance? A specific event like the loss of money or a material good? Most relevantly, would they still have learned the lesson if spending money wasn't involved? Or if something less immediately costly (like belief, for instance) was required. I know how I learn. I don't know if other people are the same.

In contrast, I think the brain has a built-in mechanism which already "knows" how to do logic.

I agree to a point. I think that a lot of 'logic' is a hack based off of this basic mechanism. But how much more extensive is it than "AND OR NOT?" I've read that many cultures will describe the number of people in a group over a certain number as 'many.' I don't think that we can intuitively understand the difference between 20,000 and 30,000. We can work it out because we've learned math, roman numerals, etc. And once we've done the math, we can apply intuitive concepts like "more" or "less than."

My tentative conclusion is that Myers-Briggs, and it's derivatives, aren't meaningful or valid.

I don't know enough to say otherwise.

Have you read any of C.S. Lewis's apologetics books?

I read his book "Miracles" and had about the same reaction to it as you did to Bertrand Russel. It's been a long while since I've read through it. I don't think it even tried to address evolutionary arguments when discussing consciousness (I don't know if its date of authorship was a factor in this) and it seemed like there were a lot of holes in his arguments. I vaugely recall an argument to the tune of "a whole can never be more than the sum of its parts" though I could very well be misremembering things. If there's another text that you'd reccomend, I'll pick it up.

If you'd say it addressed "process" people, then it might overturn the above statement, since his books are some of the most popular "religious arguments" for Christianity.

Would you say he's responsible for most conversions and is the subject of most sermons?

That's one of the things which I find so intriguing about Christanity, Ryan. Being an active Christian, and knowing many people who are (and some who are in transition), I frequently see extensive changes -- of that magnitude -- but apparently without any coercive control structure.

Interesting. I can't think of any close friends of mine that really underwent a conversion experience so I have no basis for comparison.

If you want, there are various ways to get involved, most of which are also pretty non-coercive.

I've been thinking of going to bible study or something similar. I don't really get anything out of formal services. Lewis's line about hymns being "mediocre poetry set to music" is one thing I've found so far that I can really agree with him on. Once I get school under control, I'll check out the local Hillel or some such.

AI being mostly dead at the moment

What do you mean? The AI in video games seems to improve. Tonal recognition and text completion on phones seems to be getting better. I'm not sure if OCR has improved any. I assume you mean that these things are the vast minority of existing applications? Or is no progress really being made in the field.

I think I've been exposed to computer heuristics a little bit, given your explanation. Programs which use hill climbing behavior and so forth, as described in the book "Swarm Intelligence." I assume fuzzy logic also be considered a heuristic?

P.S. One question I've been meaning to ask; What techniques do you use to stay up to date? Books? Courses? Simple interactions in the course of your work? I tried going to one free macromedia training session when it was offered to me in the Philippines, but I got little out of it (aside from a really cool metal pen with embedded clock base.)

I can't think of any close friends of mine that really underwent a conversion experience so I have no basis for comparison.

On reflection, that isn't totally accurate.

One friend did become more religious after college, but I don't know him well enough to gauge the difference in his personality, and he seemed friendly enough before. I don't know many people who frequent bars, much less who are hated by bar tenders.

I have another friend who is converting to Islam. But it's hard to gauge how it's affecting her.

I've also gotten "friend of friend" stories. They seem to move in both directions. One friend of my fathers who used to have a terrible temper seemed to find a lot of peace with religion. Another couple, also friends of my parents, had one partner convert and the other didn't. The result was supposedly responsible for the breakup of their marraige. But neither are things I personally observed, so I can't evaluate their accuracy.

Ryan!

Hi there! Hope life is treating you well. I can see that in the past several weeks (work has been crazy!) I've dropped the ball on this thread. My apologies, and I'll try to rectify that, with a reasonable response soon.

In the mean time, best to you and your loved ones, and I hope you're doing well in your new location.

Your friend...

Not a problem at all. Best of luck to you with work.

I'm sure the main thread is of much more general interest to most of your readers, anyways.

If you do have any advice on volunteering, though, I'd welcome it. (I know to avoid organizations like PIRG.)

Now to answer a few long-unanswered comments here...

One friend of my fathers who used to have a terrible temper seemed to find a lot of peace with religion...

Actually, I'm not a huge fan of "religion" per se.

I agree that religion in general can modify behavior, but my impression is that if you look across the board, mileage may vary.

I expect that Buddhists really do get more detached. (I've seen studies which seem to indicate frequent Zazen-style meditation correlates with dissociation.) And people who adhere to Islam can lead a cleaner life (Yusuf Islam) but can also get caught up in more violent fringes. And one guy gets involved with Christianity and becomes nicer, while another might find it the perfect excuse to become more judgemental. (I've met such people.)

Sometimes, this is just channeling the same problem into a different (sometimes less harmful) framework.

But there's something more here, Ryan.

Is this link on Social Judgement Theory of any benefit?

This is the reason I've been holding off on answering this... I have to work through the materials to give you a reasonable response.

That said, and partially done: Certainly, I accept point #3, that "our level of 'ego-involvement' affects the size of our lattitudes". I also can testify first hand, regarding point #4, both from watching myself and others, that we want to deflect or re-work conflicting data or statements. It's a real challenge to stop one's brain from doing this at time.

Thank you very much for the time and attention you've given to the post. I appreciate it.

Now, you might argue that perhaps I didn't have
much ego-involvement. Perhaps: but what litmus test would we use, then, if not lifelong support? And it seems if this defense can be presented, then the theory itself might be unfalsifiable.

You've said before that you've changed your mind before and you could do it again (given evidence).
http://tim.2wgroup.com/blog/archives/001413.html
I'd go out on a limb here and say that because you
have certain ego attachment to various mental tools (truth and falsity, rules for evidence, intolerance for cognitive dissonance and a mind for detail etc.) that this enables you to change your mind when other people might not.

If I was going to see if a person really could change a lifelong belief, I'd look at several things; first, their ego attachment to their belief. Second, a person's operative episitmology. How do they determine what is true or false? Feelings? Logic? Enlightened self interest? Since 'changing your mind' tends to be a case of rules of evidence overruling previously held beliefs, I'd speculate that those rules could be somehow measured and used to predict a person's likelihood of giving up a belief to which they had strong ego attachment.